Easy Tactics to Market your Event (pt 1)

Traditional Marketing Tactics

In this section we will show you how to promote an event using traditional marketing tactics. Depending on the size of the event, and the associated spend for the event, certain traditional event marketing tactics are more highly recommended than others. For example, PR can be a great cost effective event promotion tactic. Press releases are an effective way to announce the event, especially if you have established media relationships. If you have a bit more to spend on promoting your event, you can use direct mail marketing campaigns. Let’s talk about a few additional traditional event marketing ideas for you to consider.

Promoting An Event At Checkout

Do you have a retail location, or are you partnering with any other local business who do? If so, promoting your event to customers when they are checking out in your store is a great tactic. These folks definitely meet your target audience criteria and they also like your products since they are buying something from you. You can work with your employees to ensure that every customer who comes through their checkout line gets informed about your upcoming event.

The three easiest ways to ensure your customers receive your event information are:

Tell them. Simply provide your event details to your employees and have them mention the event to each customer during the checkout process. Hand them a postcard. Printing costs are more expensive than free, but providing customers with a tangible printed postcard with your event promotion details can have a bigger impact. Customers can take the postcard home as a reminder. You could even run a fun contest whereby any customer who brings the postcard to the event gets entered into a drawing at the event. The postcard can become a nice promotional piece for marketing your event. Text customers event information. Providing your employees with a tool like OnSpot Social allows them to collect customer contact information and instantly text event promotion details to each customer while they checkout. Just a like a postcard, the text message can serve as a reminder for the event. Not only that, but you’ve also successfully captured that customer’s contact information, which can be used for future event promotion.

Event Marketing with Local Media

One tried-and-true event marketing tactic is to use local media. Whether it’s running an ad in the local newspaper or finding local happenings websites that talk about things to do in the local area, local media can be a great tool for promoting an event. People are always looking for fun things to do in their local community, so community oriented media is a great place to get your event details in front of your target audience.

Remember to keep your audience in mind and choose the right local media platforms to fit that audience. For example, older audiences might be more apt to read a newspaper’s event section, whereas a younger more tech savvy audience may find things to do by browsing local happenings websites. Be sure to find the right local mix for your event.

Social Media

One of the biggest questions we get asked is, “how can I promote my event online?”.  Social media marketing works great for event promotion. One of the most effective ways to advertise your event is on social media pages because it’s free and can get you a lot of eyeballs.  LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are great ways to reach people that will attend the event. Facebook and LinkedIn offer affordable advertising that targets your audience. Create a page for the event on Facebook. You can easily promote it and advertising is inexpensive.

You can also capture social media followers at the event to help grow your business’s social media followers. Event promotion on social media can also go viral, which gets us into our next creative event marketing idea.

Source: onspot social

Blogger: Ugwuoko Angela Adaobi